Faculty

08/03/2016

Christopher Tang, UCLA Distinguished Professor of Decisions, Operations and Technology Management and the Edward W. Carter Chair in Business Administration, questioned early whether Uber could compete successfully in China with Didi-Kuaidi (now Didi Chuxing), the country’s dominant ride-sharing company, valued at $15 billion with one million drivers in 360 cities.

In his piece published in the September 2015 issue of Fortune, “Will China Be Uber’s Waterloo?” Tang pointed to a number of business model adaptations that Uber faced in its efforts to “dominate the mobilized sharing economy worldwide.” After losing $1 billion annually while operating in China, Uber is calling it quits and selling its stake in the ride-sharing business to its rival, Didi Chuxing.

Tang recaps some of the reasons he thought Uber never had a chance in China and what led to its not-so-surprising departure from this market:

Uber is a U.S.-based company; Didi is a home-grown Chinese company with strong backing from Alibaba, Apple and others.

Uber wanted to displace the taxi business in China, while Didi was more inclusive of that industry, encouraging cooperation with drivers in its business model.

Uber was the new kid on the block; Didi merged with Kaudi to ensure more than 80 percent market share.

Uber was late to adopt Alipay (mobile payment system in China with 85 percent market share), while Didi and Alipay had embedded service within WeChat, a social media platform with more than 700 million users in China. Most consumers in China find it easier to use one mobile app, WeChat, to use Didi and Alipay to hail and pay for the taxi service in a seamless manner.

Leamer, who holds UCLA Anderson’s Chauncey J. Medberry Chair and also serves as director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast, is running as a write-in candidate along with presidential candidate Laurence Kotlikoff, who, like Leamer, is a professor of economics. Kotlikoff, who holds numerous chairs and appointments, is on the faculty at Boston University. Leamer and Kotlikoff first met when the former was teaching at Harvard and the latter was his student.

Leamer holds no illusions about being elected: He realizes that in today’s political climate it is virtually impossible for a write-in candidate with limited resources to actually get the most votes. But even with winning the election off the table, Leamer didn’t get involved as a publicity stunt. Instead, he sees it as a way for him and Kotlikoff to try to bring to the fore what they see as key economic issues.

Leamer sat down with the UCLA Anderson blog to discuss these issues and opened by saying, “Economists are taught to think logically and clearly about all the potential impacts of a policy — not just the surface impact, but that which is unexpected. A famous 19th-century French economist named Frederic Bastiat said, ‘There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.’”

Laurence Kotlikoff is running as a write-in candidate for president of the United States

Politicians, Leamer is implying, often propose policies that, on the surface, look good to voters. But they often do so without considering the indirect impacts. Like the “good economists” that Bastiat references, Kotlikoff and Leamer are focused on what must be foreseen.

Ed Leamer: We represent the youth of America, the future of America, and we want to make sure that the public policies that are put in place are guaranteeing that America’s going to be a great place in a decade or two. We think every bill that goes through Congress should have a youth impact statement. There should be an assessment as to how this affects the youth of America. And if it’s adverse, then we ought to be avoiding that. It ought to get a big red asterisk, saying, “This is not good for the youth of America.”

Q: What types of proposals would avoid that asterisk?

Leamer: From my perspective, there are three things that the nation ought to do.

First of all, we’ve got to have much better employment prospects for college graduates and high school graduates. We need to do something to create the access to good jobs for the youth, and to a large extent that comes from workforce development and better educational outcomes.

The best paper competition was sponsored by the China Business Initiative of the Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business at Columbia University. The awards were presented at the recent annual Conference of Chinese Scholars Association for Management Science and Engineering (CSAMSE). The theme of the 2016 CSAMSE, Internet Plus and Scientific Management, reflects a desire to focus on the new challenges for the management practice of the traditional industries in the background of internet and mobile social networks, and the corresponding data-driven management techniques and tools. Scholars in MSE from around the world were invited to present their research at the conference.

07/08/2016

At the close of each academic year, select UCLA Anderson faculty members are recognized by the Teaching Improvement Committee for their excellence in teaching, research, leadership and mentorship.

The Anderson community congratulates these faculty members for their accomplishments:

Assistant Professor Elisa Long received the Dean George W. Robbins Assistant Professor Teaching Award. Teaching the introductory Data and Decisions course for both full-time MBAs and FEMBAs, Professor Long strives to educate her students using relevant examples. By having them examine probability through game shows like Let’s Make a Deal and create models of relevant life decisions such as buying or leasing a new car, Professor Long keeps her students engaged while equipping them with knowledge they can apply to a multitude of careers.

Professor of Accounting David Aboody received the Citibank Teaching Award. Professor Aboody’s accounting students have highlighted his signature wit and lighthearted-yet-passionate approach to teaching as attributes that make him a uniquely gifted educator. A member of the Anderson faculty since 1995, Professor Aboody has spent over 20 years in steadfast dedication to his research and curriculum — and leaves an inimitable impression on his students as a result.

Associate Professor Noah Goldsteinwas honored with the Neidorf “Decade” Teaching Award. Professor Goldstein holds joint appointments at UCLA in the Psychology Department and at the David Geffen School of Medicine. Educating Anderson MBAs on the psychology of persuasion, Professor Goldstein employs a focus on being engaging and motivating that has led to his students’ labeling him as enthusiastic, interesting and easy to talk to. This encouraging style inspires Professor Goldstein’s students to apply concepts learned in class to their professional and personal lives in order to become more effective influencers.

06/24/2016

UCLA Anderson Dean Judy Olian has spent much of her time recently meeting with alumni on campus, across the country and internationally. One of the most important elements in her most recent “State of the School” presentations has been the school’s excellent record of faculty recruitment, one of the ways Anderson continues to meet the needs of the always evolving landscapes in both research and the classroom.

Simply put, it’s just one of the ways the school continues to Think in the Next. After welcoming eight new members to its globally renowned faculty last year, UCLA Anderson has added 10 this year.

Dominique Hanssens might well consider UCLA Anderson home, as this is where he has spent his entire academic career, serving in a variety of roles and capacities that include faculty chair, associate dean and marketing area chair. Along the way he has collected numerous honors and awards, authored and co-authored a host of published papers, books and book chapters, consulted with large corporations, served on numerous committees and editorial boards, been interviewed by top broadcast and print media, and expanded his academic horizons as the 2005–07 executive director of the Marketing Science Institute (MSI) in Cambridge. He is a pioneer in the use of what is now known as “big data” in marketing, focusing his research on strategic marketing problems, in particular marketing productivity, in which he applies his expertise in data-analytic methods. Several industries, including hospitality, airline and banking, adopted his research to develop and advance their ongoing marketing strategies.

In November 2015, Hanssens officially retired from his teaching responsibilities, but he is far from relinquishing his ties to the school. Indeed, he remains director of the Morrison Family Center for Marketing Studies and Data Analytics and continues working with and mentoring Ph.D. students. He also continues his research endeavors as Distinguished Research Professor of Marketing at UCLA.

Hanssens took time from his still busy schedule to ponder the years he has spent here on the myriad activities with which he has been involved and the roles he has played as teacher, researcher, corporate partner and groundbreaking analyst in the area of marketing.

Q: What prompted your interest in marketing analytics?

I first became interested in an academic career during my undergraduate program in Antwerp, Belgium. My interest in marketing analytics was prompted by a former MIT professor who got me thinking of pursuing a Ph.D. in the U.S. But it was while I was at Purdue that a guest lecturer piqued my interest in time-series models in marketing, an area I found fascinating. You need a lot of passion for a topic to make it through a Ph.D., tenure, etc., and I found that I had a passion for this type of work.

Q: You are often asked about your work in the area of big data, but your research and efforts predate that more modernly recognized industry. Where did your work begin?

My research has been focused on answering the question, “How well does marketing work?” It really began with an early project I did with just one sheet of data and a little model to find out how marketing, in this case price changes versus advertising spending could affect brand sales. Consider the fact that just two elements of marketing — sales calls and advertising — represent about 10 percent of the economy. Ours is an $18 trillion economy, so about $1.8 trillion is spent on sales calls and advertising. It’s a huge portion of economic activity.

“Having this journal on this list is important, as FT counts the per capita faculty publications in these journals to calculate the research ranking of faculty,” says Chris Tang, current editor-in-chief of M&SOM and distinguished professor and holder of the Edward W. Carter Chair in Business Administration at UCLA Anderson School of Management. “This research score accounts for 10 percent of the Global MBA, Executive MBA and online MBA rankings.”

The FT journal list, developed in 2003, initially included 40 journals, adding five more in 2012. In 2016, FT invited the deans of 210 business schools to suggest journals to be dropped from or added to the list. Based on the votes submitted by 140 business schools worldwide, four journals were dropped and nine out of 150 journals that were nominated were added to the FT list. The M&SOM was among the most recent additions.

06/03/2016

Variety may be the spice of life, but does it also increase happiness? That’s the proverbial question that drove Cassie Mogilner Holmes, associate professor of marketing, to find an answer. Holmes, who recently joined UCLA Anderson from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, has focused on this and other inquiries into happiness for the better part of her academic career.

Her research, published in many top-tier publications, examines a variety of questions, such as how focusing on time (rather than money) increases happiness, how the meaning of happiness changes over the course of one’s lifetime, how giving time to others can alleviate the stress of feeling time constrained, and how much happiness people enjoy from spending their time on extraordinary and ordinary experiences.

Her latest endeavor, “Does Variety among Activities Increase Happiness?” to be published in the Journal of Consumer Research, explores how the variety among the activities that fill people’s day-to-day lives affects their happiness. The findings may seem almost counterintuitive: Spending time on more varied activities often leads to greater happiness — but not always. For longer time periods (like a day or a week), more varied activities increase subsequent happiness by making that time feel more stimulating. However, for shorter time periods (like 30 minutes or an hour), more varied activities instead decrease subsequent happiness by undermining people’s sense of productivity. Sharing her empirical findings in classes that include Advertising and Marketing Communications as well as Strategic Brand Management, Holmes will provide students with a better understanding of the emotional experience that drives consumers’ decision-making and day-to-day living.

01/19/2016

On January 5, I had a chance to be a panelist at a discussion titled Enhancing Opportunities in the Transatlantic Market: Best Practices for SMEs and Startups Including Innovative Finance, organized by the European-American Enterprise Council and the U.S. Commerce Department, alongside the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

TradeUp director Kimberly Benson moderated the seven-member panel of people who help make business and investments flow across the Atlantic. The tips I offered to U.S. and European entrepreneurs that look to alternative financing platforms to raise capital include:

Do your homework. With financing platforms proliferating, companies need to do their homework to find the right fit in terms of sector, size, size and type of raise, types of investors (e.g., angels vs. institutionals), and preferred monetization model (e.g., commission vs. subscription). Household name platforms are not necessarily the best bet: research the market for providers that are working on, and have investors for, companies like yours.

Consider alignment of interests. If you want the platform to be on your side, follow the money. Consider how the platform is paid. If the platform makes money on raises that succeed, it is interested in helping you raise; if it makes money on monthly subscriptions, it has an interest in filling the platform with companies like yours. You may want to work with the former set — and make sure you work with a team licensed to market your raise (act as broker-dealer) and is in compliance with U.S. financial regulations.

Be proactive: Advertising your raise on a platform is just the start. It gets you 5 percent of the way to your goal. Even if you have an expert platform team promoting your raise, they are not inside your business. It is your job to keep the fundraising team up to date on developing within your business and with your clients. It is also your job to market and do PR for your business and generate buzz useful for your raise. And it is your job to close an investor coming through a platform — so do perfect your pitch.

TradeUp is keen to work with European companies coming to the U.S. market and U.S. companies expanding to Europe. Headquartered in Los Angeles, the firm also has a presence in London and staff that speaks seven European languages. Contact TradeUp if you are looking to cross the Atlantic and need capital and counsel alike.

Kati Suominen is a visiting assistant adjunct professor at UCLA Anderson and founder and CEO of TradeUp. Her post originally appeared on the TradeUp blog. Suominen will travel to Davos, Switzerland, this month to participate in the Economist’s keynote discussion on digital ecosystems, coinciding with the 2016 World Economic Forum.

UCLA Anderson’s own Keith Chen, associate professor of economics and head of economic research for Uber, was first to take the stage. Known in academe for blurring the lines between economics, psychology and biology, Chen may be best known in the wider world for his design of Uber’s now famous “surge” pricing model.

For those who’ve been relying on a unicycle as their primary mode of transportation for the last five or so years, Uber is the alternative that turned paid transportation models on their heads, nearly driving the taxi industry out of business and in the process disrupting the entire transportation space. This is thanks in large part to Chen’s surge pricing model, which is based on the simple law of supply and demand. Surge calculates a higher fare for rides in certain geographic regions identified by a combination of mapping technologies to create spatial grids that provide a dense view of the world. This allows Uber to break the whole wide world into manageable grids so that when demand is high in a certain area, rates increase and drivers earn more per ride. Riders have the choice to wait out the “surge” in price by staying put or to accept the higher fare.